This page is dedicated to small things that could give players an edge in the game. It is still in progress, please feel free to add any tips you have found to be useful.
New Player Tips (Patch 1.9.1)[]
Welcome to Event Horizon! If you just found this page then you may be a new player looking for some general pointers. This is a very open game which offers almost infinite customization in ship design and you are heavily encouraged to experiment around with them to see what strategy you prefer. However, your options may be limited in the early game (Less than about 30-40LY away from your home planet) and you may run in to times where you feel as though you are locked into using brute force to fight unfair opponents. A player's first few encounters with a Scout Mk2 or a Trident can be very frustrating. While they can be handled easily by mid game with long range weapons and very fast ships you won't have those until much later. Therefore, this mini guide was made to help new players overcome these challenges as early as possible so they can quickly move on to the much more fun mid game.
Starter Ships and Early Game Ship Design Tips[]
You will start with three ships: the Scout, the Raven, and the Spectrum. Take them all for a test run and see how their fighting styles differ. The Scout is agile, accurate, but also frail. The Raven is a balanced ship with high damage torpedoes which can penetrate shields and has decent range but slow shot velocity. The Spectrum meanwhile is slow, short ranged, and high damage. Your main ship troubles in the early game will be attrition from fighting multiple waves of ships, and hitting your targets. The only way to prevent attrition is to either have high HP or be very fast. Meanwhile for very fast ships you won't have the long ranged high accuracy weaponry required for taking them down. Instead you'll have to rely on closing the gap and that is impossible to do if you opt for a very high HP build. Are you seeing a pattern here? Speed and accuracy is king for the early game. Lets look at our starters again. Scout is fast, accurate, and maneuverable. Raven is balanced but has slow shot velocity ruining its accuracy against fast targets. Spectrum will never be able to close the gap to deal its damage. Therefore you will be heavily relying on the Scout throughout the early game. Again because this bears repeating, SPEED AND ACCURACY IS KING FOR THE EARLY GAME!
Your first new ships will mostly be from either your home base, or Veniri, Jurgan, and Bushrak bases and their research. Most early game options won't offer a significant advantage besides filling up your hangar slots. Egg may be useful for its quantum detonation ability against big and slow targets though, so there's that. Some of your first real viable ships outside of your Scout will be the Bushrak Zephyr, the Jurgan Chrysalis, and the Scout MK2 (obviously). The Zephyr is a medium speed ship with heavy damage (at the time) missiles which have homing ability. The Chrysalis is like the smaller Jurgans except it avoids their rearward weapon issue by having a s-slot which can mount powerful 2x2 special weapons such as the pulsar MKII. The Chrysalis can also use its rear weapon slots to provide infinite recoil based velocity. The Scout MK2 can use slot expansion to mount an autotargetting railgun (which can be found in Veniri research) and become a powerful sniper. Speaking of slot expansion use it whenever you can! Especially for weapon and engine slots! Bigger weapon slots ususally mean higher range weapons and bigger engine slots means faster speed or more bulk! It can turn average ships like the Kryptoria into an absolute monster with the right expansions.
Additional ships to keep an eye out for is the Jurgan Oblivion or the Sayjix Kryptoria. Oblivion is slow and and bulky but because of its amazing weapons (Quantum Torpedo and pulsar MKII) it can deal with almost any slow to medium speed ship and it will regenerate any damage taken remarkably quickly. Once you have Oblivion and have started to fight factions outside of Korerans, Veniri, Jurgans, or Bushrak you can say you have passed the early game! Speaking of Korerans make sure to use a reliable Thor killer setup (see comments on the Thor page) and snag some of their extremely useful repair bot modules.
Some of my final reccomendations is to seek out Neganari for their mass dampers and barrel satellites to greatly expand your options, and eventually take on the fearsome Daazen for their extremely powerful antimatter reactors to provide some much needed juice for your big weapons and engines.
General[]
These are some useful tricks for weapons.
- If you are being sucked in by a Black hole generator, go horizontal towards it to use it as a slingshot and escape.
- With the new physics the black hole now spins your ship around, in order to escape, you must attempt to resist by accelerating in the direction your ship is pointing too.
- To escape from a temporary black hole it's possible to survive by thrusting into ship's actual direction, so suction should be slowed down for enough time to black hole disappear.
- Use satellites as much as you can. You can fit them with weapons, engines or general utility modules and offer the possibility of further enhancing a ship's strengths or make up a ship's weaknesses.
- Make your own custom ships and redesign them and test them in Arena's training exercises or gauntlet. Find a design that matches your tactics.
- Never leave a slot in a ship empty. Either put nanofiber structures for speed, armor for durability, or fuel cells for versatility. Green slots should definitely never be empty.
- Ships equipped with a pulsar or Heavy Antimatter Bomb M1/M2 can be completely or almost completely immune to missiles or rockets. Activate them and they will destroy missiles/rockets before they hit the ship.
- Binding the fire and shield abilities on ships like the Spectrum can help you win almost any head on engagement. Just beware of your energy consumption.
- Once you've unlocked the Oracle capital ship and the Death Ray, it becomes easy to clear out enemy ships. Simply equip an energy shield and charge the Death Ray- when you fire, it'll take out any ship in range.
- After early game the player gain access to a much wider array or weapons. The easy stats to judge by are weapon type, range and damage type, but the player will also get access to more green modules that can start changing the players perspective. The players more comfortable with math, when considering weapons should consider damage per second (obviously heavy dps tend towards shorter fights and less attrition), damage per energy (as player unlock ships with more green slots, high energy focus and automated reloaded modules make up the dps portion but will be more energy intensive hence dpe become relavent), damage per module (as even weaker weapons when sufficiently dense can result in higher overall damage output), or a combination of damage per second-energy-module depending what is the ships limitation. But of course battle style will probably play a bigger role in weapon choice (short range high dps, long range sniper, or high output wall of bullets brawler, etc)
- On the topic of repair and resilience, there are a several options(which may also be used in combination): shield system(consists of shield capacitor and shield generator, exceptions in EHF), repair bot, repair ray, ship regeneration, M81 repair drone system(consists of M81 drone bay, drone factory, optional drone boosters) and energy shield system(consisting of energy shield module and fuel cells/armored fuel cells). In early game a combination of shield system and ship regeneration(from bio armor) are quite effective defense system for lightweight and decent resilience.
- For use of repair bots, note that the repair bot can be destroyed (by enemy fire or by collision) and repair happens in pulses which align with the repair bots repair beam. There is a technique where repair bot energy consumption may be conserved if activation of repair bot is timed well; when the button is activated a regular timing sequence for the bot cycles between idly orbiting or using its repair beam(it starts with idling); the sequences resets if the bot is fully stowed away(and hence restarting the sequence it will idle and waste energy) but in its idle sequence the player may intermittently release the repair bots activation button when the player releases the button energy consumption cease and the repair bot starts to stow away, but if the player reactivates the repair bot before it fully stows away then the repair/idle sequence does not reset and hence energy consumption may be reduced during the idle sequence; note with this technique the intermittent deactivation of repair bot is too short for energy regen to restart.
Stars[]
Stars are the "premium" in-game currency. They are used for purchasing items at the Smuggler's Bases, for performing certain ship upgrades, and for retrying an exploration.
The fastest way to get stars early in the game is to watch advertisements. It is possible to purchase them for real-world money, or for credits from Smuggler's Bases at a price of 30000/21000(with skill). Winning against double veteran flagships each rewards 1 star. Free Star bases seem to have an increased star drop amount on capture, scaling with distance for even 15 per base, possibly more.
Combat[]
In most cases, enemy ships will directly charge at the player, which makes slower ships with more weapons a greater asset than lightly armed, fast ships. That said, some of the most dangerous ships are the ones that don't do this, so having something that can move fast is necessary.
Although fast ships tend to be better at surviving, especially when enemy waves start stacking. But lack of usable firepower will lead to stacking so the challenge for the player is squeezing the most usable firepower out of a comfortably fast ship. When there is a significant power difference between you and your enemy (ie. your Lvl100 ship vs lvl200 enemy), speed becomes the best defense (as weapons that can't hit you, do zero damage).
It's also helpful to maintain a smaller fleet which is at a much higher level than any opposition you might encounter. With less ships, the experience builds faster, and any new ships can always be quickly leveled through Gauntlet events. Attrition is less of a problem when your ships are five times the level of your opponents, especially if you have repair drones to deal with any damage accrued.
In Frontier Scouts (without missiles) are really only good for a single purpose: running. As they are one of the fastest units in the game they can be useful for baiting enemies. The purpose of this is to make use of enemy drones. Enemy drones (especially the ones from bosses) can be a massive threat if not dealt with quickly. However, drones will automatically begin targeting the closest ship if their carrier ship is destroyed. With fast ships (such as a scout with only generators, inertial dampers and thrusters) these drones can be led to other ships, netting extra kills at minimal risk to your ship.
Ships with the warp drive can be irritating to fight, but are easy to trick into running into attacks. Simply line up in front of them, and fire before you get in weapons range. The enemy ship will preemptively jump and be hit by your attacks. Another effective tactic is to use a swarm of drones which will easily be able to overwhelm them by forcing them to teleport into every shot from every ship thus depleting their energy. Alternative you can line up behind the enemy (as they often have less weaponry pointing backwards) and the shots still have a decent chance of still lining up.
Ships with the stealth field are hard to spot, but remember that the camera will always be positioned directly between your ship and the current enemy. A stealth ship is thus always directly opposite your own ship as long as you keep moving in a straight line toward your enemy. Also note you can turn up the brightness on your device which may help you see a moving shimmer/figure.
Ship with the cloaking device can avoid damage, but can be tricked into spending their energy by firing one shot at a time. They will rarely cloak once their energy is low, at which point you can hit them with your remaining reactor power. This has to be redone every time they recover their reactor power.
Any ship with a black hole generator (black hole bombs which suck ships in and then explode), especially the Leech MK2, can only reliably be defeated with light ships as heavier ships will be dragged into the vortex and destroyed. Alternatively, anything with an afterburner can usually escape the pull of the black hole and can also escape the initial black hole assault from a Leech Mk2. On heavier ships the braking system can offset the drag for the black hole and the afterburner can easily move you away. Another way is to fire missiles into the Black hole, while your enemy is on the other side. The missiles will be catapulted to the other side and gain extra range.
By swapping ships with the pause menu in combat, the ship currently in use will have energy refilled and if it's been destroyed, the (small) repair bot restored, as well stealth ships enter in stealth mode. Especially useful for the latter part, it can also be used to escape being overwhelmed by enemies. Be careful as switching ships when significantly outnumber could mean you spawn in the middle of heavy firing range (note even stealth ships if close enough to the enemy can still trigger the enemy weapons). Keep in mind you can select the same ship to "switch" to!
Note: As of version 0.14, due to an unknown bug, all non-DOT weapons that have AOE can no longer decrease energy when attacking ships equipping Frontal Energy Shield or Energy Shield.
Research[]
By spending Alien Technology points, research unlocks the ability to craft faction-specific technology and ships at workshops. Alien Technology points are earned by either defeating nodes aligned to specific factions, by defeating double Capital Ships, explore Terran planets or buying them from the base or a smugglers' base. Note that higher level technology also require a higher level workshop.
You may also find blueprints of technology when exploring planets, these blueprints instantly research a given technology for you and can save you a lot of research-points, as well as unlocking non-researchable hidden technology blueprints. Capital Ship blueprints don't seem to exist. You still need the prerequisites for this ship to progress further up that branch of the tech tree.
Crafting[]
After clearing a faction capital, you can access its shop and workshop. The workshop allows you to craft modules and ships specific to that faction depending on what research you have unlocked. In addition to needing to research specific technology, your workshop level needs to be high enough to build it, which is dependent on how far it is from your home base. Crafting items costs less than buying them in a shop. It should be noted that the original home world counts as a Free Stars workshop, which cannot craft any equipment or ships of the 11 factions. However, faction workshops may craft Free Stars technology.
Building a Fleet[]
To start with a player has three ships: a Spectrum, a Scout, and a Raven. Both the Scout and Raven are good ships, the latter able to handle nearly any encounter if properly outfitted. As you explore, you may find new ships at beacons or for sale at faction bases. Most of these are redundant and can be removed from your hangar, but a few offer options your original ships do not. Ships bought are more expensive but they do come pre-equipped with a standard build, though you'll have to pay to unlock the slots. Ships found at beacons and repaired usually have little to no starting equipment, but anything they do have isn't locked, but they're cheaper and can be outfitted with the excess of loot you find. Beacon offers are lost if you can't afford them. The Home Base also has some decent ships that you can buy. These include the Zephyr , Egg, and ISS Corvette . As a note, The Leech is not as good as the ones in the abandoned bases. The one you find the abandoned bases are Leech Mk2. There is also the option of visiting a Smugglers Base (see below) and making an in-app purchase for 100 stars and the Falcon. This ship will prove to be a very solid asset, being very strong and moderately agile. Beware of the in-app purchase option as the price can vary considerably depending on which country you are in.
- A good starter since 13.1/13.2 is Scouts with Pulse Cannon Mk2 and then when you can craft Scout Mk2 with auto targeting and Pulse Cannon Mk2. Keep the weight down and Missile Satellites for defense/drones. Can easily clear almost anything except some Capital ships or Stuff with point defense systems. Nice part is no leveling on these as wasted as make a good secondary line while filling your smaller sized fleet slots.
- Another milestone is the Oblivion cruiser ship which fields enough firepower to takeout early game capitol ships, and hence unlock more faction bases and tech.
- And the Beholder is a good mid game ship that can be expanded to be quite dominating with high engine, green and blue slots.
Getting Modules for Ships[]
Any ship needs modules to function and there are a few ways to get them. They can be bought in shops at the home base, at faction base that have been captured, smuggler's base or at traders found at beacons. Items can also be found after battles, with harder battles yielding better loot. The major influence for how difficult a battle will be is how far is it from the home world. Fighting Capital Ships or exploring abandoned space stations are both good ways to get the strongest items.
If your fleet is running out of reactors a good way to get more and often high level ones, such as the anti-matter reactor, attacking an abandoned space station is advised. This is due to anti-matter reactor being a Daazen item and this is the faction that occupied abandoned space stations. While it is not impossible to get other faction's items here, it is more likely to get Daazen ones here.
When sufficient amount of money has been gained then players can also purchase ships from captured bases and unlocking/removing reactors from the purchased ships.
The Hangar - Equipping a Fleet[]
Ships have to be loaded in the hangar and only loaded ships will be taken into battle. A maximum of 12 ships can be in your fleet. Since update 0.12.2, you start out with very few slots in your hangar available, but as you fight and win battles, your crew will gain experience, and you will get Pilot Points. These pilot points can be used to unlock different technologies from the pilot technology tree. Among many other things, several of the technologies unlock additional slots for ships in your hangar. This update also added ship combat classes. In order from smallest to largest: Frigate, Destroyer, Cruiser, Battleship and Capital Ship. In order to have more of the larger ships in your hangar, you must upgrade the hangar slots. A Capital Ship cannot be loaded into a slot meant for Cruisers and smaller, but any ship can be fit into a Capital Ship slot. Upgrading the hangar slots this way can be done through the pilot technology tree.
Exploring[]
You start at the center of a galaxy filled with stars, each one containing several possible encounters. This may be combat, beacons with traders or ambushes, or even special encounters with Capital Ships or gauntlet matches. The difficulty of any star is directly proportional to its distance from your home base, which will be indicated by a symbol on the edge of your screen indicating that distance and the direction home is in. As the difficulty increases, enemy ships will be at higher levels and more numerous, capping off at 12 ships for the latter.
To start, begin exploring in a circular pattern around your base. This will allow you to build experience on weak encounters as well as discover special encounters, particularly the gauntlet matches which can be used to grind for more experience. For the moment, most special encounters save for gauntlet matches should be avoided, as you will be ill-equipped to handle them. Watch out for fuel when depaturing, as once you ran of fuel you will have to wait for a long time until rescue arrives or pay Star to instantly get 100 fuel. If an encounter is classified as "Very Easy", enemy ships will not automatically attack you.
Make sure to explore any beacons you discover. While some of them may lead you into combat, they contain the possibility of finding new ships or traders who sell helpful star maps, which in turn lead to more beacons. Note that beacons vanish after use, so take advantage of traders while you can.
Once your ships are near level 20 or so. You can branch out in one direction in search of faction territory. Combat is assured at these locations, but the enemy will always be from one faction. Taking faction bases unlocks stores and workshops to obtain more technology, making further exploration easier.
- If you have the extra Fuel, a nice way to explore is being a coward. Pick a new star close by, go there and clear then visit all the uncleared stars around it but retreating instead of fighting, rinse and repeat. You can use this to explore and find beacons/ smuggler bases/ fractions much quicker then going 1 by 1.
Beacons[]
Beacons are the source of many one time encounters, such as damaged ships, traders, people requesting fuel, or even a trap laid by enemies.
Traders are a good way to get better items and ships without attacking a faction capital. They also sell star maps and fuel, which are essential for exploring. Attacking them is not recommended, as you will not get a star map.
Damaged ships can be repaired and added to your fleet, or stripped down for spare parts. Damaged ships are far more useful early game, when you can otherwise not make/obtain certain ships. As you progress farther in the game, they simply waste valuable beacon nodes, as they can not give you star maps. Make sure that you have enough money to repair the ship, as the beacon disappears once it has been activated. As always, the farther you are from the center of the galaxy, the better, and more expensive, the ship.
There are people throughout the galaxy who, in their travels, have run out of fuel. When such people are met, you have the options of either giving them five fuel, giving them ten fuel, leaving them alone, or attacking them. It is almost always correct to give them 10 fuel, as you get an assortment of random modules, and a star map.
If a trap is sprung then you are forced into a fight. You can fight it out like the game intends, or cheat by exiting and re-entering the game, which will give the option to ignore the beacon. Doing this will sometimes simply destroy the beacon and all of its rewards, though. Keep in mind if this trick is done the beacon will always have the same thing. Fighting it out is usually the best option as is removes the beacon from your map and prevents accidental revisiting later. These fights are usually more difficult than normal, but offer better rewards, including star maps.
Since 0.15, it's also possible to encounter a Wormship capital ship, player has possibility to attack it or ignore. I would recommend attacking it as it yields many high-tier modules and large amounts of credits and stars, and it is relatively weak as it can be quickly destroyed via quantum detonator, or quick volleys from larger missile launchers. Although, if the player loses, the Wormship is gone.
Smuggler's Base[]
Smuggler's Bases are similar to stores, but accept star in trades instead of credits. These star ingredient can be bought from such bases for 30,000 credits. Assuming you have a steady supply of stars, this can be a useful alternative to normal purchases, which can be extremely expensive.
They sell leveled items, based on how far you are from the center of the galaxy, and tend to restock at least every week.
These bases also allow the player to make IAP's. A one-time $10 donation to the developer in exchange for 100 tokens and the Falcon ship is one of these. Unfortunately, the cost of IAP's varies widely depending on which country you are in, and not all IAP's remove advertisements. The $10 donation can cost up to £29.99 in the UK (approx $50 USD).
Factions[]
Factions are vital to exploring far out places as once a faction is defeated by capturing its capital, it functions similar to another home world where fuel, weapons and ships of that faction can be bought.
Capturing a faction capital is hard, but it can be made much easier by clearing all of the other systems in that faction. Progress can be seen by zooming out on the galaxy map and viewing the Defense %. One trick is to "Siege" by repeatedly defeating a re-spawning Capital Ship in the area to decrease the defense rating. Every 100% in defense rating is equivalent to another Captial Ship during base capture. Keep in mind high levels will usually mean facing off against double veteran Capital Ships.
As always, the farther the player goes from the center of the map the harder the battles are and the better the rewards will be.
Keep in mind many of the factions won't be seen until a certain light year range is reached.
Each faction tends to fit a certain technological theme:
Bushrak (Red): Mainly uses missiles, though also plasma throwers and short-range lasers. Because of their weapon choice thermal armor is an excellent, but not necessary, option for fighting them. Obtaining their missile ships should be one of a new player's first goals. Often found very close to home.
Daazen (Dark Red): The most dangerous and technologically diverse faction. Their smaller ships use vampire beams and black hole generators, while the larger ones use all manner of weaponry such as torpedoes, drones, stasis fields, missiles and rail guns to fight from afar. The Daazen faction is unique in that it can show up in neutral nodes as abandoned space stations, in addition to their boss appearing as a random boss fight like other factions. Its actual faction territory is also one of the most distant, owing to their researched equipment being some of the most useful available such as the antimatter reactor.
Neganari (Pale Yellow): Uses beams or mass drivers. Most of their ships use side-mounted weapons. Their Battleship Freighter can be used as one of the player's first drone carriers. Their research tree contains the extremely useful auto targeting units and mass dampers.
Jurgans (Orange): Mainly uses mass drivers. Very slow. They use living ships giving them passive regeneration. Their Frigates and Destroyers fire from the aft (tail) section using their weapon's impulse for rapid propulsion. These ships are best attacked from the front or the side. Their Cruiser Oblivion can be a very powerful option for steamrolling through the early game. Often found very close to home.
Korerans (Violet): Mainly uses torpedoes and drones. Their research tree contains the extremely useful repair bot greatly enhances early game survivability.
Sayjix ( Pale Green): Uses lasers, pulse cannons, and torpedoes, and drones. Their ships are known for their built in 360° auto targeting giving them incredible accuracy.
Taraniak (Yellow): Mainly uses lightning weapons and special equipment. They use warp drives to teleport around. They have living ships which gives them passive health regeneration.
Veniri (Cyan): Mainly uses pulse weapons and their variants. Outside of their fast Frigates they are very easily dealt with. With that being said, their Scout Mk2 and Paladin make for very good early game ships. Often found very close to home.
Zumbalari (White): Uses a wide range of weapons. Almost all their ships are fast. their capital ship is weak
Unknown (Violet): Uses Tachyon Beams and Anti-matter torpedoes. Its Capital Ship, Doomstar, uses a Death Ray.
The Empire (Blue): Uses Ion Cannons, Plasma Webs, and Heavy EMP Torpedos. Highly dangerous and uses a variety of weapons and tactics.
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The Syndicate (Purple): Uses two unique weapons, the Stalker Missile and Heavy Railgun. Stays at long range, except for the smaller ships. They all have innate energy resistance and many C and M slots.
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The Swarm (Gold): A late game faction which uses a variety of weapons but favors lasers. They have living ships giving them passive health regeneration. They are best known for their wormships. Extremely dangerous.
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Scavengers (Tan): Uses lasers with 180° auto target, torpedoes, missiles, and lots of reactive armor which gives them massive health pools. Thankfully they are never encountered as a hostile faction with territory. Instead, they are randomly encountered as traders or shipyard mechanics. Please take note that they require the Ancient Translator before one can interact with them. Their ships are notable for making extensive usage of mixed blue/green slots which gives the player a lot of customization options.
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Contagion (Green): Huge variety of weapons with built in auto targeting, outstanding built in kinetic resistance, passive health regeneration, extremely fast, extremely light weight, extensive usage of cloning modules, and auto revival modules makes this faction an absolute nightmare for a new player to fight. However, when their swarms grow huge and all hope is lost they do have a big weakness which can be exploited. As of patch 1.9.1 their cloned ships behave like drones meaning they can be captured with a drone capture system. Extremely dangerous otherwise.